the concept of currency is absolutely not the problem… barter systems are hugely complex and incredibly inefficient
currency is (should be) an abstraction of the value of something… to support the population as big as we have we need a system that’s able to manage that complexity
currency unlocks immense amounts of human effort and allow people to do what they want instead of just the things that are wanted in their local area. you can’t really have grants with a barter system, complex supply chains are impossible (so say goodbye to advanced scientific research and most modern technology), large scale planning is over because you can’t guarantee whether you can get the resources you need for the things that you’re able to trade in months or years time (just because your iron supplier wants toilet paper now doesn’t mean he will want it 2 years into the future when you need more iron)
it’s also a multiplier, on top of just reducing work required for every single trade. to do a lot of those large-scale things there will always be cash laying around somewhere - you get given it, and then you need to plan or get it from multiple sources until you have enough to request the resources you need… whenever currency is laying around like this, it’s wasted effort. currency works; currency gets things done when it’s moving; currency sitting around is wasted… when you put that currency in a bank, they’re able to loan it to others, who then put it to good use by being productive. you get that currency back when you’re ready, and all of a sudden there is more done that what would have otherwise been able to be done: that’s what the “made up paper system” allows (and there are many more examples of this)
it could be arguable that there’s plenty to go around and that if everyone is happy living with equality and not extravagance then we wouldn’t need to barter or trade anything… perhaps that’s true person to person (ignoring human behaviour, sociopaths, power over people in and of itself becoming the currency, doing the work that nobody wants to do - some of that can probably be tamed with societal norms and punishment, and technology) but humanity’s understanding of the universe needs to progress to improve everything for everyone, and the more we progress the more complex and large-scale the needs of the projects are that are required to do them… if you have a bundle of resources, how do you allocate them to projects without knowing how much of a dent they’ll make? how do you say which will take more to complete: ITER or the LHC? it’s already impossible for us to comprehend everything about our system of trade without removing the abstraction that simplifies it all so we can reason about it
don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of tweaks to be made to make sure currency again becomes representative of value, but currency in and of itself absolutely makes people’s lives better every single day. unrestrained capitalism is absolutely the problem with currency - currency is just its tool of choice
the concept of currency is absolutely not the problem… barter systems are hugely complex and incredibly inefficient
currency is (should be) an abstraction of the value of something… to support the population as big as we have we need a system that’s able to manage that complexity
currency unlocks immense amounts of human effort and allow people to do what they want instead of just the things that are wanted in their local area. you can’t really have grants with a barter system, complex supply chains are impossible (so say goodbye to advanced scientific research and most modern technology), large scale planning is over because you can’t guarantee whether you can get the resources you need for the things that you’re able to trade in months or years time (just because your iron supplier wants toilet paper now doesn’t mean he will want it 2 years into the future when you need more iron)
it’s also a multiplier, on top of just reducing work required for every single trade. to do a lot of those large-scale things there will always be cash laying around somewhere - you get given it, and then you need to plan or get it from multiple sources until you have enough to request the resources you need… whenever currency is laying around like this, it’s wasted effort. currency works; currency gets things done when it’s moving; currency sitting around is wasted… when you put that currency in a bank, they’re able to loan it to others, who then put it to good use by being productive. you get that currency back when you’re ready, and all of a sudden there is more done that what would have otherwise been able to be done: that’s what the “made up paper system” allows (and there are many more examples of this)
it could be arguable that there’s plenty to go around and that if everyone is happy living with equality and not extravagance then we wouldn’t need to barter or trade anything… perhaps that’s true person to person (ignoring human behaviour, sociopaths, power over people in and of itself becoming the currency, doing the work that nobody wants to do - some of that can probably be tamed with societal norms and punishment, and technology) but humanity’s understanding of the universe needs to progress to improve everything for everyone, and the more we progress the more complex and large-scale the needs of the projects are that are required to do them… if you have a bundle of resources, how do you allocate them to projects without knowing how much of a dent they’ll make? how do you say which will take more to complete: ITER or the LHC? it’s already impossible for us to comprehend everything about our system of trade without removing the abstraction that simplifies it all so we can reason about it
don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of tweaks to be made to make sure currency again becomes representative of value, but currency in and of itself absolutely makes people’s lives better every single day. unrestrained capitalism is absolutely the problem with currency - currency is just its tool of choice